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Daniel Nazer

Daniel is a Staff Attorney on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's intellectual property team, focusing on patent reform. Prior to joining EFF, Daniel was a Residential Fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. He also practiced at Keker & Van Nest, LLP, where he represented technology clients in patent and antitrust litigation. Before that, Daniel was a legal fellow with the Drug Law Reform Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. Daniel clerked for Justice Susan Kenny of the Federal Court of Australia and Judge William K. Sessions, III of the U.S. District of Vermont. Daniel has a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Western Australia, an M.A. in philosophy from Rutgers, and a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Daniel is the author of The Tragicomedy of the Surfer’s Commons (9 Deakin L. Rev. 655) and Conflict and Solidarity: The Legacy of Jeff D. (17 Geo. J. Legal Ethics 499). When he is not working, Daniel can be found surfing at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach.

Back in the fall of 2011, some undergraduates at Yale created a cool class project. As part of their law and technology class, Bay Gross and Charlie Croom built a website and game that allowed Facebook users to discover how many of their “friends” they really know.

Recent reports from Congress suggest that patent reform might be taken off the table for the summer. This bad news arrives at the same time as a new study showing that patent trolls are more active than ever before.

Like all of the patents we highlight in our Stupid Patent of the Month series, this month’s winner, U.S. Patent No. 6,795,918, is a terrible patent. But it earns a special place in the Pantheon of stupid patents because it is being wielded in one of most outrageous trolling campaigns we have ever seen.

Earlier this year, together with Durie Tangri, EFF stepped in to defend a photo hobbyist facing a patent suit. The patent owner, Garfum.com Corporation, claimed to have invented competitions on social networks where users vote for the winner. Garfum recently abandoned its lawsuit.

Imagine you’re on your way to deliver a case of beer to a party. Before you get there, your boss sends you a text: They want 2 cases now. You read the text while driving (don’t do that), so you deliver an extra case when you arrive. Having successfully completed that task, you leave for your next delivery.

The Supreme Court took a major step in cutting back on abstract software patents last June when it issued its landmark ruling in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank. In essence, the court said that abstract ideas implemented by conventional computer process are not eligible for patent protection.

The worst patent trolls bring weak cases and use the cost of defending a lawsuit as leverage to force settlements. A company called Joao Bock Transaction Systems LLC (“JBTS”) has elevated this business model to an art form. The company is associated with patent attorney and prolific “inventor” Raymond Joao.

Patent trolls are still at it. A new report from Unified Patents, found that 449 patent cases were filed in district court in January 2015—a 36% increase over January 2014. The growth was fueled largely by patent trolls, who filed more than half of the month’s cases.